The Process That We Use

Quality Network for Inpatient
CAMHS uses a method that combines the clinical audit cycle with
peer reviews. Participating teams rate themselves against the QNIC
Service Standards via an annual process of peer review. This
model aims to facilitate incremental improvements in CAMH
services.

Development of service standards:
Every two years, services in the network take part in a workshop to
review and further develop the criteria and standards for
Tier 4 services

Self review: We support members
to undertake a review of their team’s performance against the
standards. The review familiarises the team with the
standards and provides a dedicated space to reflect on their
service. The self-review takes approximately 3-5 hours to complete
as a group and is best completed over several sessions. The self
review should be completed as a multi-disciplinary
team

Peer review: A team comprising
3 staff from other member services plus a facilitator undertakes a
peer review visit. This provides an opportunity for
discussion, sharing of ideas and for the visiting team to offer
advice and support. Peer reviews take place over a single day
(10am - 3.30pm) and as many team members as possible should be
present for at least part of your peer review day. Peer
reviews take place between September and April

Detailed review report:
Information from the peer review is compiled into a detailed team
report, recognising areas of achievement and areas for improvement
and recommending how these might be addressed. Organisations
with more than one participating service will also receive an
aggregated report, enabling comparison of teams within the Trust
and providing scores for the service as a whole

Organised visit to another
service: Staff are provided with guidance and support to peer
review another member service, led by an experienced lead
reviewer. Each participating team is asked to provide at
least three members of staff to visit one other CAMHS team each.
This requires attendance at the peer review day, plus travel time
and an overnight stay where necessary. Visiting reviewers are asked
to let us know their preferences for other member services they
would like to visit. It is our experience that people find
their peer review visit a valuable part of the process, seeing
areas of good practice in other teams and engaging in frank
discussions about the challenges and potential solutions. It
also further develops their understanding of the standards and
their rationale

Benchmarking and trend
analysis: We summarise the findings from all our members into
an annual national report, enabling services to benchmark their own
performance against other services, and identifying trends in
service provision

Annual Members Forum:
In May each year we host an annual forum where members hear
the findings of our national benchmarking and trend analysis and
presentations from other services on their key challenges and
lessons they have learned. Members also consider the review
process and how it might be developed in the future

Certificate of participation:
The certificate is awarded by the Royal College of Psychiatrists as
confirmation of the service’s commitment to on-going evaluation and
quality improvement

Active on-going network
support: We work hard to ensure that all our members are
supported to share best practice, seek advice and pool learning
throughout the process. We do this through our regular
newsletter, email discussion group and publication of resources our
website

Accreditation

During cycle 15, 8 units took part
in the accreditation process. To date 20 units have been
accredited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Advantages of taking part in accreditation are that members will
have formal recognition of their good work and they will be
able to use the accreditation award to demonstrate to
commissioners, senior trust managers, referrers, young people and
parents/carers that quality and safety standards have been
met.

Teams that satisfactorily complete the accreditation process will
be accredited for three years.

If, during this three year period, the
employing organisation is aware of changes to practice that may
affect the quality of the service, it must report this to the QNIC
team which will re-consider the team’s accreditation
status.

Maintenance of approved status will
also be conditional on the provision by the team of interim data
demonstrating ongoing compliance with the standards. This will be
in the form of a three year cycle:

Year 1: Accreditation review

Year 2: Self review only

Year 3: Peer review visit

A team must have participated in at
least one year of the standard QNIC quality improvement reviews
before it has an accreditation review.

The time from registration to a
decision being made about a team’s accreditation status will be
between six and nine months.

There are three main phases of the
accreditation review: a detailed self-review, a detailed
peer-review and a decision about accreditation category and
feedback.

These reviews will be more thorough
than the usual quality improvement reviews in that they will
require evidence to validate self-ratings, will use more
information sources and more methods of data
collection.

If you would like to take part in accreditation during Cycle 16,
please contact Harriet Clarke, Programme Manager on
0203 701 2663 or hclarke@.rcpsych.ac.uk.